Viserys XXI

The meal in the hall was meagre and rather than fires in the hearths, Lysa had directed that iron braziers be lit, clustering them in the centre of the hall. Even with this, the hall had little heat and Viserys and Daenerys exchanged looks at the grim prospect of a night here.

"It's said that to winter in the Eyrie is to court death," Viserys said as he dug into the stew being served. "I'm surprised to find you still here."

Lysa wiped the side of Robin's mouth with a napkin. "This is the only place my sons can be safe. The skycells are perfect places to store frozen food and we can remain here for years if need be."

There seemed to be a less than total enthusiasm for this in the eyes of Lysa's guards. There were only six of them and as many other servants but even so it was more than a dozen people to keep warm through the winter. Food stores might hold out although some replacement would probably be needed. The sheer amount of firewood wouldn't be feasible unless loads were regularly brought up the treacherous path to the Eyrie. Viserys had sat through dozens of meetings at the Great Council on the subject of how much firewood was needed to keep a castle's occupants warm through the winter.

"Safe from the Others, maybe. Safe from the cold, I wouldn't have thought."

Robert Baratheon wouldn't have let that slip of the tongue pass without a sly remark but Lysa wasn't so shrewd. "Safe from those who would take my Sweetrobin. There are many who would seek to seize control of the Vale during his minority."

"Not so safe from the cold." He looked at the elder but smaller Arryn prince. "I don't mean to speak above your head, Prince Robert, but if you fall ill here then only your brother assures the peace of the Vale."

The boy blinked at him. "My throne is here," he said and pointed up to the dais. "Mother, I'm tired. May I nap?"

"Of course." Lysa gave Viserys a poisonous look and followed her eldest to the throne where the boy curled up, covered in blankets and furs.

The Targaryen's skin seemed to prickle at the sight and his appetite deserted him. "Perhaps I should look at the chair tonight and we can leave at dawn. I don't wish to strain your food stores."

"What chair?" asked Rennart from beyond Daenerys, who he hadn't stopped pestering since Banthis entered the hall.

"The Seastone Chair. Your father brought it here from the Iron Isles, a throne of a black oily stone."

"Oh, my chair!" His face fell. "Are you going to take it away?"

Viserys shrugged. "Only if it's more useful to us elsewhere. Hopefully it's just a lump of rock." Hopefully I can tell if it's more than that, he thought. It wasn't as if he was an actual sorcerer and relying on Bloodraven's whispering wasn't something he'd been happy about from the beginning. "Can you take me to it?"

Rennart shoveled down what was left in his bowl, nodding his head as he chewed. For his part, Viserys lifted the bowl and drank the broth before handing what was left of the stew to Daenerys who gave him an irritated look. "You need more meat on you, dear sister. The higher you fly on Banthis, the colder it will get."

He was fairly sure the key word in her muttered reply was 'chubby'. With a smile he leant over and kissed the top of her head. "In winter and in war, eat when you can. You may not have another chance for a while and this is both."

With a sigh, Daenerys emptied his bowl into hers.

Rennart took a lantern and led Viserys to a shadowy staircase. A skylight at the top of a light-well would have lit it in better times but in winter the sun never rose high enough to send significant light down to them. "Be careful," the boy warned. "It's slippery."

He wasn't wrong - there was a tracery of ice on the stone steps. Viserys held onto the rail and walked carefully down to the floor below. These chambers had been carved out of the Eyrie itself. Arrow-slits had been dug into the walls - as if there would have been the slightest use in loosing arrows out into the air, hundreds of feet above the ground. Unless, he admitted, it was at a dragon in the air.

Taking a key from his belt-purse, Rennart unlocked one of the store rooms and raised the lantern high.

At first Viserys took it for a shadow, but then he saw that the Seastone Chair rested - uncovered - against the back wall. It seemed to drink in the light and only when the boy went closer could it be seen that perfectly clear tendrils of ice had crept down the wall from above and onto the chair. Tracing them upwards with his eyes, Viserys saw that roots - soot-stained but white beneath that - dug down from above and through the wall. "What is that?"

"It's the bottom of Robin's throne." The younger Arryn grinned. "When I sit here I can hear everything from above. Robin says he can hear me down here when he sits on the throne but I don't think mother can. Or maybe she just says she can't."

"A throne that your brother naps on."

"Well it's his."

"Inarguably." Viserys studied the chair. It was nothing like Volantis' walls although mere description might easily have confused the matter. He reached over and traced one of the roots, shivering. Perhaps the cold or perhaps remembering another place of dusk, bone and shadows... "May I sit on it?"

Rennart tilted his head. "I suppose."

"By your leave, then." Viserys turned and placed his hands upon the arms before his rump hit the seat.

Sansa X

She'd spent most of the day visiting Riverrun, walking the halls where her mother had grown up, but as dusk approached, Sansa crossed the distance to the Eyrie in the blink of an eye. Robin had shown her his castle - proud, high and lonely upon its mountain crag - and she was sure now she could find it again.

The girl chose to arrive by the Moon Door, stepping out of open air and into the castle's great hall. The last thing she expected to find there was a dragon.

The dragon, which appeared to be dozing, stirred uneasily at her stifled shriek but the silver-haired woman sat, wrapped in blankets, by the braziers didn't notice. Robin Arryn, perched upon his throne, looked up. "Cousin Sansa!"

There was another in the room though, a tall bearded knight who wore black and red as if his hair wasn't enough hint at Targaryen heritage. "Prince Robin, one should rise when a lady enters the room, however unexpectedly." He drew himself up and bowed in a courtly fashion. "My lady, welcome to the Eyrie."

To her astonishment, Sansa found her cheeks warm. She drew up her skirts and curtseied. "Cousin Robin. Ser..." - she wracked her brain for a moment, remembering lessons from her septa and Aunt Cersei. "- Viserys Targaryen, I presume?"

"In the flesh." He paused and then frowned. "Well, no. The flesh is downstairs. This is a strange experience."

She nodded. "This is new to you then?"

"At least in part. My distant uncle Brynden appears to have spent near half-a-century ensounced in a weirwood chair so I suppose it isn't immediately harmful."

Robin bounced up and down. "Can we meet him?"

"He's dead."

"I'm sorry," Sansa said automatically.

"He wanted me to be prisoner in a chair much like it so I'm not." Sansa flinched and Ser Viserys's eyes must have caught it for they narrowed. "It occurs to me that I know Robin's throne and myself I'm sat upon one just a floor below, but your own... I hear word of a White Keep where the Wall once stood."

Sansa swallowed. "Yes. There is a tree within it, bound by ice to a black stone. The... their lord sits on a throne there. He bound me to a chair there."

"Will you show me?"

"I..." She shook her head. To go there like this. To see what might have come of herself... "I cannot. You should not. If they see you they might take you too. I will tell you what I can, but..."

"I will hear anything you say, Princess Sansa. But if we are to save Westeros then we cannot avoid confronting the Others. You're the only person I know of who has laid eyes upon them."

"Would you go back to where you were to be chained?" she asked him.

"Into the darkness?" Viserys took her hand between his. They were warm. "Yes. I will lead you there if you wish, if that is the bargain you would strike. And I will save you, if I can."

She felt wetness upon her cheeks. "You cannot save me, Ser Viserys. But perhaps... when I have told you everything... perhaps you can stop them from using me."

He saw her meaning and raised her hands to her lips. "If I truly cannot save you, princess - and I will try that first - then I will end your suffering. I promise by my sister's dragon."

Sansa reclaimed her hand and held it against herself. "Tomorrow? They call me back to them at night."

"I can be here when the sun rises. Can you tell me what's happened to you before you go? Anything that you can tell me would be helpful."

She nodded and Viserys led her up towards the dais where he and Robin gave her their full attention.

"They were looking for Starks specifically. They said they were after old blood - I think because the Starks are one of the oldest First Men houses."

"Why would that matter?" Robin looked petulant. "The maester told me House Arryn are the purest of the Andals."

"You're half-Tully," she told him. "And our mothers were half Whent."

"And the mother's line carries some traits better than the father's." Viserys scratched at his beard thoughtfully. "The First Men sealed their pacts with the Singers the same way lords have always done: through marriage. The Starks, the Brackens, the Blackwoods... I'm not sure about the Whents and the Tullys, but many of the First Men have some traces of their blood."

"Who are the Singers?"

"The Children of the Forest."

"They're real? I thought they were just a story!" exclaimed the boy.

"If the Others are real," Sansa said with a weak smile. "Why not others? Do you think they might help us?"

"I doubt it." There was something very dry to Viserys' answer. "Do you have any idea what the Others might want in the end? I doubt it's conquest. They could have come south at any time in... however long they've haunted the far North. The Wall was clearly no obstacle."

"They've never said. I'm nothing but a tool to them." She frowned. "But... I've never seen many of them. The White Keep is enormous but it's almost empty."

"I would very much like to see that," Viserys assured her.

"Me too!"

The older two exchanged shrugs. There really wasn't anything they could do to keep the princeling from joining them in this.

Ned XXIV

By now the lords had for the most part become used to the idea of dire wolves in their war councils. Robb had sat Rick at his side and it wasn't hard for Ned to make sure that they were accompanied by their companions. In addition to being his own eyes and ears, the wolves were an added security to his son and nephew.

"Is it safe to keep these beasts close?" asked Addam Marbrand - one of the exceptions. The westerland knight was another of the younger men rising as the war ate away at the lords and leaders of Westeros. He'd mostly commanded near the Kingsroad though so he'd missed seeing the wolves fighting in the east. "If whatever the Others did to our horses spreads to them..."

"Starks do not fear wolves," Robb told the men around the table with a mix of boy's bravado and a man's confidence.

Reflexively, Ned looked around. He guessed that the Others would need to be present if they tried that - as present as he was, at any rate. If they tried to turn his pack against his family then they would need to fight for the privilege.

"We have enough to concern ourselves without worrying about the Starks' pets." Beric Dondarrion rubbed at the beard he'd grown since King Robert's death. "If the Others could turn them against us they could have done so before now."

Marbrand nodded. "My apologies then."

"Is there any sign of spring in the south?" asked one of the older lords. A Reachman, Ned thought, but not one that he'd met before.

Dondarrion shook his head. "None. We knew this could be a long winter, my lords."

"And even when spring reaches the Citadel, it could be as long as a year before it arrives here."

Many of the men around the table shivered at Domeric Bolton's words. Probably none of them had considered the legend 'lands of always winter' scrawled north of the Wall on maps as reality until they'd found themselves north of the Neck.

The hot springs of Winterfell kept this hall more or less comfortable even without the fires. Outside, their men would be huddled around the fires of the wintertown, along with the smallfolk of the Stark's sworn hill clans.

Dondarrion pulled his cloak closer around himself. "Prince Stannis has written again of the White Keep."

"How can he know what may stand so far to the north?" demanded Robert Glover. "I don't see him up here, facing the Other's armies."

"His grace is a sailor, and he has a very young queen to counsel," Robb reminded them. "Every shipment of food that reaches White Harbour is his work. House Baratheon has bled already alongside us."

Eyes fell to the floor at the reminder. "And no news of who the queen will wed?" asked Bolton.

"With only old men, boys and cravens south of the Neck..." Glover snorted. "It's not as if she has many choices."

With a clatter of chairs several of the gathered men rose, pulling daggers. "Take that back you -"

Ned reached down and stroked the manes of the direwolves and the great beasts rose up from where they sat, snarls cutting through the chamber and silencing them.

"If you can't keep a civil tongue in my hall, Robert Glover, then go outside and scream at the Others. It'll do more good than barking at the good men who've marched north to join us."

For a moment it looked as if the lord would refuse but then he shook his head. "My meaning, my lords, is that all who are worthy of our queen are here - in the North. I would not for the life of me insult the stout warriors who have shown they have that worth."

"Well spoken." Dondarrion looked back at the table. "As little as I like it, Prince Stannis makes a sound point that we can't defeat the Others unless we can somehow take the fight to them."

"How does he imagine we can send any sort of force that far north, particularly without horses?"

"With grave difficulty," the Stormlander admitted. "He admits as much. The only route that seems to have a chance of success would be from the Bay of Seals."

There were uneasy voices but Thoros of Myr pushed himself to his feet. Ned had stayed clear of the Red Priest, not so much due to the man himself as to his companion. He assumed that the burning man wasn't actually aflame in the real world but what it signified he couldn't guess. "I will take my men on that route if you wish," he offered.

"We're looking at more than a hundred miles through the snow," warned Rick. "Can your men manage it?"

"Perhaps not alone," admitted Thoros. "But my company are fired by the great R'hllor. And we have not yet faced the forces of the Great Other. It is more than fair that fresh forces should bear the weight of this."

Robb tapped the table. "With sleds, a small company might be able to carry enough food," he cautioned. "Thoros' men, some guides who know the land and the conditions... you might be able to get that far. But could less than a hundred men accomplish anything against the White Keep?"

"An army of thousands might not be enough," Thoros agreed. "But guile may serve us here - if the Others do not expect a small force then we might approach in time to seize their gates before they know that we're there."

"And then?"

"We do as much damage as we can." The priest shrugged helplessly. "Perhaps it will help, perhaps not. We can only try, Prince Stark."

Dondarrion considered. "It is worth the attempt. If nothing else, striking back would help to keep the men's spirits up."

Rick leant over to his cousin. "You realise that enough food to get them there is only half that needed?" he whispered, Ned alone close enough to overhear.

"We can find dog-sleds that men can haul in a pinch," Robb answered aloud. "Enough to reach the Keep, you understand Thoros."

The response was a solemn nod of understanding. "I will carry the fires of R'hllor to the heart of the Other's realm, Prince Stark. That is all I can ask of you."

"You may find other fires joining yours." Dondarrion unfolded the letter from Stannis further. "Daenerys Targaryen's dragons have all been flown by their riders. They aren't quite ready for war yet - but the Queen's Hand assures us it won't be long before they can be ridden north as well."

Olenna XV

Oberyn Martell's anger seemed to have congealed into something dark and malevolent when he reached the chambers allocated to Olenna.

"He was suffocated," he told her bluntly. "Only a fool would have missed it - but Doran always preferred fools as his Maesters. Two functions filled by one man, he told me. And one less spy."

"Truthfully, I didn't doubt your daughter's words." Olenna had found a cushioned chair that was reasonably comfortable for her. "That leaves the question of who did the deed."

Oberyn went to the window and glared out at the towers. "My niece is no fool."

"Then we can assume she knew." Olenna looked around the room. "And she has loyal men around her."

Duncan Selmy looked up. "We have dragons."

"Dragons aren't the answer to everything, whatever Viserys Targaryen thinks. As a Dornishman you should know that."

"I've never been to Dorne before. And my mother's from about as far west as one can go in Dorne."

Oberyn shook his head. "It should be in your blood."

The door opened to admit Nymeria and a young man in maester's robes. Olenna had to look twice before she realised that the robes were mis-leading her and the one wearing them was a woman, hair cropped short.

The Red Viper arched one eyebrow. "Weren't you in Oldtown?"

"Haven't you had my letters?" The 'maester' sat down without waiting for an invitation. "Arianne called me back. She said she was worried about uncle's health and didn't have faith in the maesters here.

"And how much training have you had in the medical arts."

"Not enough for a link but I'm not convinced that the master here deserves his." The young woman shrugged. "I arrived a day too late though."

"Did you examine his body?" asked Olenna.

"I'm sorry, who would you be?"

She pursed her lips. "Lady Olenna Tyrell."

"My compliments to the Grand Maester. The gossip was that you were on the brink of death."

"At my age that's a given." She'd no illusions of living many more years. If she was lucky, she might see the spring. Although that was true of everyone in Westeros right now, a thought that brightened Olenna's day slightly. "You would be Sarella, I assume. And the body?"

"No, that wasn't asked of me. Once someone's dead I don't see that it does much good."

"Your uncle was smothered in his sleep," Oberyn explained.

"Smothered?"

"Yes."

"Not poisoned. That's a relief or I'd want to know what Tyene was up to."

"She's not the only one in Dorne who knows about poisons," Oberyn observed coldly.

"Just the one in Arianne's pocket. So who did it?"

"I don't know the hands yet. Areo Hotah might, but he's disappeared."

Sarella considered that. "Interesting. Not the hands… you suspect…?"

"Arianne claimed to be surprised to learn it was smothering."

"I've never lost money at dice betting on Arianne's subtlety. And she doesn't have the patience for cyvasse."

"She gains most by her father's death." Olenna looked at the young woman. "Your father says it's easy to be sure Doran was smothered. Not being an expert in that, would you say it's so?"

"I could just about believe Arianne might miss the signs," Sarella said after a moment. "But someone around her would notice and since she has many loyal lords I'd be surprised if it hadn't been pointed out."

"Which brings us back to the earlier point. What can be done if she's complicit in Doran's death?"

Sarella looked over at Duncan. "Well, Nymeria tells me you have dragons…"

"Two of them!"

The dark-skinned woman nodded. "No wonder Arianne has the towers manned. If they get brought down by the scorpions and crossbows, I'll get to examine the body of a dragon. No one's written anything for the Citadel on that since the reign of Jaeherys the Wise."

"Arianne's prepared for us then."

"I said she wasn't subtle. That isn't the same thing as being stupid, although I can see why you might be confused."

Duncan bristled but Olenna raised her hand to silence him. "Then a direct response isn't in order."

"And she won't let you leave if she thinks you're a threat to her."

"Thank you, Sarella." Olenna saw Oberyn's fingers close upon the balcony rail. "Then this will have to be addressed with subtlety."

Duncan pointed at Sarella. "Can he be trusted?"

Olenna and Oberyn exchanged looks, silently agreeing that Duncan probably wouldn't be the best choice for anything subtle. "I'm inclined to believe so," the prince said. "The two of us will discuss the evidence Doran was murdered with Arianne. She'll have to make some show of investigation."

Nymeria bit her lips. "Duncan and I should stay here with Qelos and Orbar."

"Duncan, yes. You can run some errands for me." Olenna looked around the chamber. "Fetch me some paper and ink. I'll host a tea party."

"A tea party."

"Don't worry, boy. You'll just have to look decorative."

This didn't appear to notably reassure Duncan.